


Something Beneath The Floorboards

by heartofstanding



Series: Something Beneath The Floorboards [1]
Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Angst, Annie is a vampire, Death, Gen, George is still a werewolf, Minor Character Death, Mitchell is the ghost of a WWI soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Supernatural Elements, World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-28 05:50:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17781770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofstanding/pseuds/heartofstanding
Summary: George is a werewolf trying to run away from what he is. Annie is a recently converted vampire who may have just killed her fiancé. Attempting to hide from the world, they buy an old farm in Ireland, not realising it already has an owner: Mitchell, the ghost of a World War I soldier.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in about 2014 and I had a great many plans for. Unfortunately, I stalled while writing the next section of and couldn't quite muster the energy to fix it. I do love the fic and maybe, one day, I will be motivated to polish up the unedited chapters and maybe, just maybe, finish writing it but I sadly doubt it. 
> 
> The whole premise of this fic was sparked by [ this gifset](http://nuingiliath.tumblr.com/post/79649791340/) of a "creature swap" with George as a vampire, Annie as a werewolf and Mitchell as a ghost. I made different decisions (keeping George as the werewolf and having Mitchell still dying in World War I) but it was really what provided the initial inspiration.

A soldier enters a forest. France. 1917. It's quiet, for a battlefield. Everything's in the distance. Everything's shrouded in mist and he's cold, he's really fucking cold. There's blood running down the side of his head, and his vision blurs, everything sliding in and out of focus. His hands grip his rifle tightly enough so his hands can't shake.

Before him: dark shapes of men, leaning over bodies. The soldier stops, narrows his eyes. Bodies. He can hear the weak voices of their cries. The soldier doesn't want to go on, go forward. He's scared, absurdly scared, like he's going to shit himself any moment now. But the voices – he can recognise them. Men. His men. He grits his teeth and goes on.

-

The thing that gets George the most is how much it hurts.

He's not stupid. Being mauled by an wild animal – well, he'd have to be an idiot not to think it'd hurt. Being left to bleed out, that'd hurt too. It should hurt, what's happened to him, but it shouldn't hurt like this. All the words he's read about pain mean nothing. It's not white-hot, marrow-of-bones pain, it just really _fucking_ hurts.

It isn't just the pain though. It's the fear, the memory of what had done this to him. It should be a nightmare, but it isn't. It hurts too much to be a dream.

-

Annie hears the little girl crying before she sees her, curled in on herself. Owen tells her not to bother, that the girl's parents are bound to be around somewhere and walks off. But Annie can't just walk past. She hurries down the alley and reaches out for the girl.

'Are you okay?'

The girl looks up at her with dry eyes that scorch black. Annie screams.

-

The soldier's eyes open. Gone is France, gone is the forest and the sound of the war. Instead, there is such quiet he thinks he might be deaf or dead. He looks around. He is home. He can hear his father and brother arguing. It doesn't make sense, but it's a blessing. He smiles. A blessing.

-

George should be fine. He knows this, looking around the hospital room. He tries to smile at the sight of the bright cards, the flowers. He'll be going home soon. But the effort is too much, his smile feels weak, faint, more than half missing. He should be fine. It's just—

The scars – _scratches_ – on his back burn beneath the sterile hospital bandages.

Something is wrong.

-

Annie is hungry.

It's right in her, this endless scream. It ricochets through her, every inch of her body _consumed_ by this need. She can't hide from it, this pain, this wanting, this _need_. She's so hungry. It's everywhere, she can't make it stop. She needs to feed.

Herrick opens the door. He smiles sadly when he sees her.

'Oh, Annie,' he says, 'There's no point in fighting it. It's only natural.'

-

The soldier doesn't think, just runs, calling out for his sister. He's still in uniform, but that hardly seems to matter. He's home. At the top of the stairs, he stops – she's on the bottom steps, one hand holding on the railing, the other the washing basket. She glances up at him, eyes widening and he goes to say her name, but she blinks and looks away. She keeps on coming up the stairs until she walks right through him.

-

It's morning, when George wakes, naked and alone, mouth full of grass. He rolls onto his back and stares at the sky. It had hurt worse than anything before, even the mauling that nearly cost him his life, but afterward—

No, he doesn't want to think about that. It's part of the nightmare his life's become. But if he ignores it, it's not real. He is not a monster. It's something else. It's not him.

It's not.

-

Owen is dead on the floor, blood flowing unfailingly from the wound on his neck. Annie could stop it, save him and make him into something like her - but there's something in her that doesn't want to, that refuses to let her move from her spot on the floor. Owen is dead - she can't remember how it happened, only the beginning of their usual argument - and she doesn't want to save him.

She doesn't understand what it means.


	2. Chapter 1

> O what can ail thee, knight at arms  
>  Alone and palely loitering?  
>  The sedge has wither'd from the lake,  
>  And no birds singing  
>  _John Keats_  
> 

'You bought a house?'

Annie nods. George considers the possibility that she's gone mad. It's absurd – she can't _leave_. She's bought a house three hundred miles away, across the sea. She can't be seriously considering _moving_ there. An investment property wouldn't be worth the amount of glee currently on Annie's face, though. Could it? That's beside the point, really – she can't leave him.

'In Ireland?'

'Yeah. In Ireland. Keep up, George.'

George blinks, again considers the possibility that Annie's gone mad. He looks around the motel room they're sitting in, trying to work out if there's a hint on the cream-painted walls. The room gives away nothing. It's plain, clean and undoubtedly expensive, with more furniture than a bed, table and chairs. There's even a desk where Annie's set up shop, piles of paper stacked up neatly around her laptop. He doesn't want to know who's paying for it, because the answer is probably Herrick or one of his vampire friends.

'Why have you bought a house in Ireland?'

'Well, I was thinking. It would be good to get away from... everything.' She moves around the room restlessly, pacing over the cream carpet in black boots. 'You know? Have a fresh start, away from all the negative influences here.'

He's starting to worry she's swallowed a self-help book. Even if by _negative influences_ she probably means 'the fact that I just murdered my fiancé' and 'Herrick and the vampires'. It's not that George thinks they're bad aims – quite the opposite, actually – but the way she's phrasing them is just _insane_.

'In Ireland.'

'I thought we'd already covered that bit.' She glances over her shoulder at him and laughs. 'Your face, George!'

She looks so beautiful, so utterly kind and lovely that it's hard to even think of taking offence at her teasing. He just sighs and studies his knees. 'Why in Ireland?'

Annie looks down at her clasped hands, fiddling with the over-long sleeves of her cardigan. 'Well,' and her voice sounds vague now, 'I've always wanted to go. It looks like a postcard.'

George blinks. 'Okay.'

'Anyway, the house is in the middle of nowhere and the photos of it look _amazing_ and it's pretty cheap, all things considered.'

'Right.' George squints at her. 'Have you gotten it all checked out? You know what they say about dodgy real estate listings.'

'George.' Annie looks at him, eyes suddenly hard. 'Right now, I don't care if it's falling down or got ten leaks per room. I need to get away from here. Preferably now, but the sale won't be finalised for another—' she checks her watch, '—Sixteen hours. And then there's a few weeks until I can actually move in.'

'Oh.' _Oh._ George looks down at his knees. It's not so much the idea of the fresh start, he realises, but the idea of running away, isolating herself from the rest of the world. At least until she'd washed the taste of Owen's blood out of her mouth.

(And she still isn't talking about it, says she can't even remember what happened. Which is okay, in George's mind, because he doesn't really want to know what she's capable of. He doesn't want know the details. Herrick's handling it so it's going to be fine.)

'So, you're just going to go there, by yourself?'

Annie hesitates.

'Annie.'

If she says Herrick is going with her, he might have to tell her that how much of monumentally stupid idea the house is. If she's looking for his support and approval, she'll be waiting a long time for it. What is she thinking, _leaving_?

'Well. I thought.' She stops, bites her lip. 'Well, I thought you might like to come along.' She jumps up, running to grab her laptop from where it's sitting on the desk. 'Let me show you the photos – it looks _amazing_.'

'Me? Why would I go?'

It's shock more than anything that makes him protest. He jerks when Annie dumps the laptop on the table he's sitting at, firing it up and pulling up a bookmarked page. They wait for it to load on the motel's slow internet. Whoever's paying for the room better not be paying extra for internet access.

'What have you got here that's worth staying for?' Annie asks, quietly, as they watch the page slowly appear. 'The job at the cafe? The girl you make eyes at but won't actually talk to?'

 _Touché_ , he thinks but doesn't say it out loud. If he does, he'd be close to conceding her point and he's not ready for that. Sure, there's nothing in particular for him here – but to uproot his life _again_ , to move away from what the little comfort and security he's managed to find here, it's inconceivable.

The photos have finally loaded. The house looks impressive, old stonework and ivy growing up one side of it. It's not large, but it's not a pokey little place either. Two storeys and a tiny little attic window. Green fields surround it for what looks like miles and miles and there's mountains in the distance. The sky is drab and grey, looking moments away from rain, but it suits the place, somehow making it look even prettier. Annie clicks through the photos offering commentary on each of them, as well as a history of the place.

The house was built in the 1720s, though the land was farmed before then, and electricity was put through in the 1930s. It had belonged to a family – Annie isn't sure about the name, thinks it starts with M or N – for generations, eventually sold early in the 1950s for far less money than it was actually worth at the time. There's a town nearby, about thirty minutes by car. It's not too small, decent enough, but far off enough that Annie thought they could go weeks and even months without seeing a person, if they wanted. Plus, there's plenty of room in the grounds for the wolf to roam on a full moon.

'So, it's like a farm?'

'Yeah. The land was subdivided back in the 1930s and sold off. There's still quite a bit attached to the house but they say that's manageable.'

'What, so you're moving there to run a farm now? You've lived in suburbia all your life!'

Annie shrugs. 'Maybe.' She exhales sharply and gives him a barely-there smile. 'Oh please, George, say you'll come.'

He sighs, takes off his glasses to rub at his eyes and then squint at the photo of the outside of the farm-house. It does look nice, but it means leaving what little he's gained here. 'I can't lose everything _again_ , Annie, I can't.'

She nods slowly, hiding her disappointment behind a thick veil of hair. He wants to take the words back, to make her smile and beam at him, to laugh and hug him tightly enough that the coldness of her skin and the pacing of the wolf inside his head won't matter. But the idea of _and then what_ , leaving whatever he has found again is so terrifying that it silences him.

+

He goes back to his hostel and tries to sleep.

It's useless, though. A group of teenagers decide to have a party and are impossibly loud. When George slams the window shut to silence the noise, the room is muggy. He constantly pulls at the blankets in a rhythm of too hot/too cold. Up when he starts to shiver, down when he becomes sticky with sweat. When the teens finally go to bed, he shoves the window open and curls up beneath the bed covers. He checks his phone for the time – 3:57am. God. He has a shift starting at 7.

Just when he thinks he might be _finally_ about to drift off to sleep, it starts to rain. It takes awhile for the sound to penetrate and, after that, the realisation that if it's raining, the leak in the ceiling will start up soon. Sure enough, it does and he leaps out of bed, manages to get his foot caught in one of the blankets, trip, fall and kick himself in the bum. His chest slams against the floor that only pretends to resemble floorboards and he's left staring at the puddle rapidly forming just inches from his nose.

He gets the bucket from the cheap, plywood wardrobe and drops it on top of the puddle. He rubs at his knees, sore, no doubt pink and possibly bruised and then heads back to bed. But the steady _drip-drop-plunk-drop_ of the rain in the bucket is maddening. He pulls the pillow over his head, but he can still hear it.

(which isn't really surprising, given the thinness of the pillow but still.)

He switches on the bedside lamp, sits up. It's useless trying to pretend sleep is going to happen. He looks around the room, at the meagre contents of his wardrobe, the toiletry case and second-hand books on top of the small cupboard. The suitcase beneath the window that he can't bring himself to put away in case he needs to leave again quickly.

Abruptly, he remembers Annie's words. _What have you got here that's worth staying for?_ What is here for him? A crappy job, friends he can't bring himself to make, a girl he can't talk to in case he infects her. He scrubs a hand through his hair.

And when morning finally comes, the alarm will wake him too early and he'll head straight for the bathroom. A communal bathroom that's never quite clean enough, the showers never hot or strong enough. Then it's off to the cafe and making shitty coffee for people who don't bother to look up or say 'please'.

George picks up his phone, holds it against his mouth for a moment, then lowers it. He runs a finger over the keys.

He'll regret this. He knows he will.

+

Annie is very organised. She's got folders full of paperwork. She's made timelines and tables and graphs that has every momentous event scheduled until she's finally there. At the house. For instance, she can check the timeline for work going on at the house and knows that in two days' time, the real estate will have some workmen around, checking that the electricity is switched on and working, that the plumbing is functional.

Annie's not expecting much beyond _functional_. The house is old, after all, and even the listing doesn't shy away from the fact that it needs a lot of work. It doesn't matter, though. It'll be a project – she can do it up any way she wants. It'll be something to distract her from the guilt and hunger, just like getting organised for the move is distracting her now. Everything's been pretty much sorted, but she's going through the photos on the listing now, trying to see what work needs to be done, making notes. Just to get a rough idea before she can see it for herself.

She sets down her pen when the knock comes and she gets up, suddenly noticing how cold it is. She grabs a jacket from the wardrobe and slips it on as she hurries to get the door. It's Herrick and she's not surprised, just a tiny bit disappointed that he isn't giving her the space she needs and wants so badly.

'Ah,' he says, 'Late night?'

She shrugs, shutting the door behind him. 'Just doing a bit of work on the house.'

She doesn't like the way he stands in the room, looking over the bed and the desk with his sharp little eyes, the way he wears his suit or the fact his breath smells terrible. Vaguely, she wonders if he's always had bad breath or if it's something that comes from being a vampire. She inwardly reminds herself to check her own breath more often and stock up on mints.

She forces herself to smile. 'Did you want a cup of tea?'

'No, I drank before I came.' He laughs and her stomach crawls. She knows what he means about that. Someone dead in an alleyway somewhere. Someone who won't be missed but who should be. 'I wouldn't say no to a glass of claret, though. The wine here is excellent.'

'I haven't got any wine,' she says, crossing her arms over her chest. She just wants him to tell her what he's so obviously come here to tell her and then go.

Herrick shakes his head. 'But you've got room service! And someone else footing the bill. Come on, you can go a bit crazy.'

Annie sighs. 'I don't want to drink wine, Herrick. And I'm not hungry.'

Which isn't true, but she can't tell him the truth.

For a moment, there's silence. Herrick goes over to the window, stares out at the city laid at their feet. The lights are twinkling and the place seems so... small, yet too easy to get lost in. It's people seem like ants, so worried about keeping to their daily rhythm that they never realise they're dying and never think to check in the shadows for monsters.

'Are you sure you're not?' Herrick's voice is soft, almost-kind, except Annie knows he's not kind at all. 'It's been awhile since you fed. She wouldn't be happy—'

' _She_ doesn't care about me,' Annie says, the firmness of her voice startling even her. Herrick turns around, all wide eyes and arched brows. 'She made me, then she left me. She doesn't care, Herrick. Stop pretending she does.'

Herrick lets it go. He could argue, like he has done before, but she knows his speeches off by heart now. He circles to the desk where she has the laptop open, her list of work needed next to it, the folders with her timelines and the paperwork stacked neatly, waiting for when it's time to pack it all up and leave Bristol.

'You're really going through with this?'

Annie nods. 'I don't have a reason not to, do I?'

'What if I asked you to stay?' His voice is soft, seemingly sincere and for a moment she wavers. Is he saying that because he genuinely believes  _he_ needs _her_? Or is this another one of his tricks, his lies?

'I wouldn't,' she says, and she means it. She doesn't need him.

'You wound me,' he says. He still seems genuine but she thinks there might be an element of relief in his words. He'll be relieved of the burden of looking after her, cleaning up her messes. He sighs and drifts a hand over the keys of the laptop. 'And what are you going to do there?'

Annie sighs. 'Do the place up. Maybe take up farming. I don't know, enjoy the peace and quiet?'

'I'm hearing rumours you're going on the wagon,' Herrick says. 'I find it absurd, of course. What we are can't be denied. You're a—'

'A shark, so be a shark. I know.' She's heard it all before. 'But we're not actually sharks, are we? We don't _need_ to kill to survive. We don't even need to drink blood to survive.'

Herrick's silent for a long time, rolling his tongue over his teeth. 'It's nature, Annie. _Our_ nature. We were made this way. There's no shame in giving in to what we were always meant to be. Just remember that.'

At last – but not at last, he's not been here for even a hour – he's going. It's a short visit, for even him, but now he's moving to the door. He stops when he reaches it and she should have known his leaving so soon was just too good to be true.

'Things are changing,' he says abruptly, 'There will always be a place for you here, Annie, but times are changing and one day you might have to choose a side.'

'What's changing?' She demands, 'What are you talking about?'

He smiles, all teeth and no humour. 'The next step in evolution.'

'What?'

His smile grows larger, crueller, and then he's turning back from her, pulling open the door. And then he's gone.

Annie sighs, resting a hand on her chest. Her heart is still, the reminder of the fact that she's dead, dead and cold and alone and so hungry. She crosses to the door, shuts it. For a moment, she stares at it, then turns around to lean her back against it. She wonders if he's right and slides down the door. Wondering if she needs the blood. She's so hungry.

+

It's George's phone call that saves her.

Which might be melodramatic, but here she is, sinking into a pit of despair, this _hunger_ licking at her bones. Here she is, thinking about going after Herrick, going for a spot of hunting. _Hunting._ She hates that word, hated the idea of it even before she knew about vampires. Now she seems to think about it the same way she thinks of _brushing your teeth_. And she knows if she gives into Herrick, that'll be the end of her resistance. She'll lose herself in the blood and the power. The house won't matter anymore, only the question of who is going to be her next meal.

And then George calls.

To be honest, she'd expected George to be one of those people who only believes in ringing someone between 8am to 8pm unless it's an emergency. And if he had to call someone after 8pm, it would only be after sending a text to make sure it's okay to phone. But there's none of that, just her phone ringing with George's name on the display . She wipes her eyes, and accepts the call, pressing the phone to her ear.

 _'Is, um, is the offer still open?'_  
  
'Yeah, yeah. Of course.' She feels herself smile, even though she doesn't particularly feel like it. Her voice is thick with tears, and she wonders if George can tell she's been crying.

_'When do we leave?'_

'Oh, um.' She glances at the desk, remembers the one thing she hasn't organised. 'Haven't quite decided. Couple of weeks to tie up things here, then. You know.'

 _'Great.'_ It sounds like he means it too. Then. _'Are you all right?'_  
  
She has to put the phone down briefly, wipe a hand over her face and then clear her throat. 'Yes. I'm okay.' She looks around the room, finds herself smiling again. 'Great, actually.'

There's a long pause, then, _'Good.'_ Another long pause. _'I guess I've got a few things to sort out fairly quickly.'_

She laughs, thinks it sounds like a sob and hastily stifles it. 'Yeah. If you need any help, just let me know.'

They talk a little longer, make plans to meet up after George has finished work so they can go over the details. By the time she hangs up, the crisis has passed and the hunger is gone. She looks over at the desk, at the folders of information and smiles. The sooner they're there, the better things will be.

+

The creek is beautiful. He thinks it always has been. He can't remember when or why he first came here, only that the creek has always been with him. He doesn't know if the water runs cold, either. Carefully, he leans forward and dips three fingers in the water – but it runs right through his fingers and he feels... nothing.

He frowns, flicks his fingers to shake off water that isn't there, and pulls his knees to his chest. Turns his eyes away from the creek, over the overgrown fields in desperate need of work. Pete should be making a list of everything that needs doing, so he can decide which ones need doing first and get onto it. Except Pete is long gone, there's only him now, and he can't remember who Pete was.

He grinds his hands into his eyes, frowning at the ache in his head, the hollowness in his chest where his heart should be. There are great yawning gaps in his mind, his memories flowing through his fingers like silt. The grains of muck remain, but he can't make sense of them. Names, faces and places fly across his eyes, but the only two things he can rely on are the war and the farm. The farm, at least, is safe.

Without warning, he feels it, the sound blasting through him an exploding shell, like endless German artillery. Ducking, he throws himself down, covers his head but—

There's no artillery. No shelling. No mud and blood and endless noise and endless death.

He gets to his feet, hands searching for a rifle that isn't there—

(where is it! when did he lose it? oh. many years ago.)

There are no guns here. Not even some old and rusty thing that he fixed and fixed until he couldn't fix it anymore.

(what went first, his memory or his heart or the gun?)

Yet still, deep in the hollow, he feels it. Marrow of the bones, down in the guts type feeling. Except he doesn't have bones or guts anymore. He wonders if he took a bullet to the belly. That was a popular way to go. He can't remember how it happened. How he died.

He's lost track again. He feels it. The profound unsettlement, the pain of the knife thrust deeper still in this land. Trespassers.

+

Pair of men in blue cover-alls. They seem so stark, so clean and he bites his lip as he watches one consult a red clipboard, a set of bright silver keys held in the clip.

'Hey, Pat,' says the other, 'Y'know this place is supposed to be haunted? My granddad swore his life on it.'

He smiles.

Pat, the one with the clipboard, smiles and laughs. 'Your granddad's lost his marbles, mate. Come on, let's just get this over with.'

He follows them inside the house, listens to them laugh at the half-done wallpaper job in the kitchen. He frowns at it, thinking he should finish the job of tearing it off. Sand it all back and paint the walls primrose yellow again. The wallpaper is green with pink flowers and it's wrong. Ida would hate it. _He_ hates it. The people who put it up had been stubborn. They hadn't wanted to go. He wonders if he's always been this scatter-brained, or whether it was the effort involved in getting rid of them that made him start to rot.

Pat moves through the rooms, scribbling on the clipboard while the other plays with the light-switches and checks the fuse box.

The other stops and stares out a filthy window. 'You reckon the old blokes are taking bets on how long this new lot are staying?'

The lights flicker. He turns in alarm. People are coming here. More trespassers, more people stepping on his land, the knife thrust deeper and deeper—

'What's this about, Steve? There's no such thing as ghosts,' Pat says, eyes wide, concerned but slightly mocking. 'Come on, we've got upstairs to do.'

—how can he can go on if he can't get them out? How can he?

They've gone upstairs, the workmen, and he thinks of the room with the box of photos. What if they take it? What if these new people take the photos and threw them on the fire? He'll keep them safe, he has to, the old photos and the house. It's what keeps him here.

He closes his eyes. The other one – Steve – is up on a ladder, trying to force the attic trapdoor open, and he's tempted to give the ladder a shove, to send him toppling down. The trapdoor hasn't worked since water had got in and swollen it shut. He fixed the leak because the sound of it tapping on the bare floorboards was annoying, but he didn't need the trapdoor to get into the attic.

'You can't get in that way,' he says, but they ignore him.

He'd expected that. They can't hear him. They can't see him.

The lights flicker. Their radios crackle. The handle splinters and breaks off in Steve's hand.

'I told you,' he says, and goes downstairs to wait for them to leave.

+

By night fall, he's forgotten their names and what they've done. He stands in the kitchen, ripping the wallpaper off and leaving great sheets of it on the floor. Goes to the living room and sits on the floor, looks around the empty room, the cold hearth. The floorboards beneath him need to be sanded back, varnished again and buffed to a sheen, the state his mammy always wanted them to be in. Didn't she use to get down on her hands and knees, scrubbing them until her back gave out or it was time to put dinner on the stove?

(didn't she?)

He'll need to get new boards, he thinks. There's rot in them. He bites his lip. Maybe some are salvageable. Maybe he can save most.

It comes to him now, hard, that the house, the land, is possibly too much for him. Everything needs fixing. He does one thing, finds another thing and he can only make do with what he's got on hand. He takes what people bring, takes what they leave behind, but it doesn't go far. He's got a tin of pink paint somewhere, but it's not enough to paint a wall.

He looks down at his hands sitting neatly in his lap. His fingers seem pale, white against the dark wool of his half-finger gloves.

(he must have been cold once.)

The curtains are rotting. The whole place is rotting. Falling down around him.

The strength in him is burning out.

The war is at an end.

(or so he thinks, it's carved itself on his mind. he can never be free of it.)

And he is losing.

When he holds his hands up to the trickle of moonlight pouring through the dirty window, he fancies he can see right through them. He's going blind, he thinks, but he knows that's not right. It's another word, one that means something different. It all comes down to the one thing, though. Soon he won't be able to see himself.


	3. Chapter 2

They arrive too early.

Or too late. George checks his watch outside the real estate office. It's closed up, the shutters down, and Annie rings the number on the door only to find out that their agent is away for the day and if they'd called an hour before, they might have caught her. They'd been recklessly optimistic and determinedly relaxed, believing that even though they were three days ahead of Annie's schedule, everything would still just fall into place. The agent would be at the local office, not the more central, busier one, and she'd smile and take them straight up to the house and reveal that the movers had been there earlier that day instead of on the Monday, as they'd arranged.

Annie hangs up, biting her lip and stashing her phone in the great cavernous bag hanging off one shoulder. There's a hungry look in her eyes, but it disappears when she blinks and looks down the wide, wide streets.

'They said if we'd rung earlier, they would've made sure we could get into the place today,' she says.

'Oh,' George says, and not anything else because it's true and he can just imagine the unspoken blame in the voice on the other end of the phone.

'Yeah,' Annie closes her eyes. 'Recommended we stay at the pub, though. Sorry. I thought it would be easy.'

George doesn't say _it's all right_ , because he's tired and cranky from travelling all day and all of yesterday, but he shrugs. 'I thought it would be too.' He nudges her with his shoulder, watches her smile faintly. 'Come on, let's go see about this pub.'

+

Annie falls back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. It's one of the ones with the fancy plasterwork, but showing its age with flaking paint and web-like cracks along the moulded flowers. In a corner, a tiny spider spins a web. Raising her finger, she traces the design in the air and then lets her arm fall back onto the mattress. She feels like an idiot. All that hope and trust that things would work out just _because_ and it's mid-afternoon, the heavy curtains drawn shut to keep out the sun that still hurts her.

She's not there. She's not safe. She feels the hunger within her, stirring. She fancies she can hear the beating hearts of all the men and women sitting down for pints of stout and lager, talking about their ordinary days. She could kill them all. Her fingers curl, her hands fist and her nails drive into her palms.

She'd wanted to kill the woman behind the bar when they'd booked in. The way she smiled when she handed over the two sets of keys, eyes lingering on the space between Annie and George.

It would be easy to pretend that it was all her. That her self control had prevailed, but it had been George who had taken her hand and pulled her away when she'd stood and stared too long.

And now disgusts swells in her belly, makes her mouth taste of bile. She had been going to kill the woman, without a thought, right in front of George and a bar full of people, and _how could she_? The hunger's still there, but she can't let it win. Can't let Owen's death be in vain.

'I'm trying,' she whispers to the cracked plaster, 'I'm really trying.'

She thinks, _that's got to count for something, hasn't it?_ But the ceiling says nothing.

+

George packs clothes for the next three days away in the small cupboard that smells of dust and mothballs. He lies down on the bed, but even though he's worn and tired, he knows he won't sleep. Or if he sleeps, he'll somehow feel worse when he wakes up again. It still seems a nice day – a bit cloudy, a bit windy, but still. The sun's still out and it's not _too_ windy.

George gets up, washes his face and heads downstairs. The woman behind the bar – Sally, her name tag reads – flashes him a smile and then turns to serve the young couple waiting in by the register. George waits until they're gone, clutching glasses of wine, and then approaches.

Sally wipes down the bench top and looks up at him with a smile. 'What can I do you for?'

'Um,' George says, wondering if she remembers the sob story they'd given her when they checked in, 'I was thinking about heading out to the farm, just to see where it is. Think I'll go mad if I have to wait til Monday to see it. But. I don't really know how to get there.'

'Oh, right! Yeah, well, you would want to see it, wouldn't you? I've never been out there myself, so.' She chews on her tongue for a moment. 'I'll see if Liam out back can do you a map. I could get you close, but Liam used to do a bit of work next door so he knows the best way.'

Sally casts her eyes around the room, making sure there's no one that wants her attention. Everyone's engrossed in their chatter. She swiftly turns on a heel and disappears through a dark door. George settles down on a stool, taps his fingers against the bar mat and squints at the dusty spirit bottles crowded on a shelf behind the register.

'What farm's this?'

A man has sidled onto the stool next to him. Thinning white hair and a mass of loose, wrinkled skin mark him as what George's mother would call an old-timer.

'Oh, um,' George scratches his head, embarrassed, 'I don't remember the name of it, it's about thirty minutes' drive from here. My friend bought it, thinking we might do it up.'

'Wouldn't be the Mitchell farm, would it?' The old man's eyes narrow as he leans closer to George, as if to conspire with him.

'Y-yeah, I think that's it,' George casts his mind back to when Annie showed him the listing. 'Pretty sure it starts with a M. Why?'

'You know it's haunted, don't you?'

George laughs, but it sounds hysterical even to his ears and the old man isn't smiling. He's completely serious, staring at George like he's crazy. Like he can't believe he's wasting his time on an idiot from England.

'Er,' George says, 'Sorry. Just—' He can't actually say _just I'm a werewolf and my friend's a vampire, so a ghost story is a bit too ridiculous to be believed_. 'Just. It's a bit predictable. Buy an old house and oh no it's haunted! Kind of thing. Not that I believe in ghosts. Sorry. No offence.'

The old bloke shrugs. 'Well, there is a ghost. Been there for years. Folk go into the farm laughing at us, thinking we're a pack of silly old buggers, then they're all white-faces getting the hell out of that farm.'

'Oh,' George says, 'And it's not, you know, a bunch of locals playing games?'

'Must be the most dedicated lot of pranksters I've heard of. The ghost's been there since the thirties, after the Mitchells packed up. Quite a lot of effort involved in a silly game, I reckon. Must be passed from parent to child.' He laughs, coughs, and laughs some more. 'It's good land too, or at least it was. Too good to let go to waste, but those fields have been left to grow wild for many a year.'

'Oh.'

The man grins, a wicked glint in his eyes. 'Who knows, maybe the ghost will like you.'

'Um.' George doesn't know what else to say, especially to that. _Well, I'm a werewolf and my friend's a vampire, do you think that'll help?_ probably wouldn't do him any favours. He bites his tongue, looks back at the door Sally went through. He wants her to come back, now, and save him from this conversation. But the door remains shut, so he has to keep playing along with the old man.

'Who is the ghost, then?' He asks, just to fill the silence.

'Buggered if I know. We all have our theories. In the back, there, that's Zach and he'd stake his life on it being Joe Mitchell. Poor bastard was never the same after his youngest son died. Willie next to him reckons it's the old farmhand that drowned after the war and his missus thinks it's someone else again, but—'

'Colm,' says Sally, her voice bright and false, 'Don't go frightening George. We need a bit of new blood around.' She passes over a photocopy of a map to George, roads picked out in green highlighter. 'Liam reckons this should do you. It's fairly straight forward until it isn't.'

+

Annie starts when George knocks on the door. She knows it's him, can smell the stench of the wolf and the hunger in her belly curdles. Relief propels her to her feet, gets her to the door to let him in. But he just stands there, clutching a sheet of paper with a dopey grin on his face.

'Thought we might go out and see the farm,' he says, and holds up the sheet of paper, a path laid out in green highlighter, 'Got directions and everything.'

Annie grins. 'George, you are an absolute genius.'

+

The property is all fenced off, the gate padlocked, but it's easy enough to park the car on the leaf-strewn drive and climb through gaps in the fence. There's more trees than Annie thought there would be, more grass and sweet-smelling air. She breathes it in and grins at George. This, she knows, is going to be fantastic.

+

He lies on his back in the attic, aware of the bare floorboards beneath him though he can't feel them. They used to be painted white, until someone came along and decided they should be striped back and varnished. They didn't finish the job.

He wonders if one day he will not be solid enough to lie here. That he will lie down and just fall. Through the boards and the empty bedrooms and the kitchen and into the cellar. That one day he will fall through wood and stone and the earth and end up on the other side of the world only to fall again. To be endlessly falling as he is endlessly dead.

He cannot get up. He cannot move. He closes his eyes and counts to ten. The world drops away. And when he opens his eyes, the ceiling above him is the same, the walls and light are the same, and he still cannot get up.

Again, he feels the knife in this land, the knife in him, and he gasps, breath flying from his breathless body. Fire flashes in his eyes, the feeling of a trespass. His lip curls, his teeth grit. More trespassers and he still cannot move. One word comes to mind, only one, but it's a perfect word.

Violation.

+

The house rises out of a tangle of blackthorns, sedge and trees like a great grey ghost. George wonders if this is the old man's ghost, the empty house. It looks cold and old. Annie presses close to him, eyes dark and large as they take it in. Their home. He wonders if they should take a photo to celebrate the occasion, but decides not to. The house provides a lure, the ancient stone of it beautiful, though crumbling in places, the glass windows filthy but unbroken.

He lifts his head up, taking a good look at the second storey, the small attic window and then—

There's a face in the window.

He jumps, stumbles, and Annie laughs at him.

'What? Did you see a ghost?'

He chances another glance, but there's nothing but fluttering, twitching lace curtains in the window now.

'Something like that,' he says, and ducks his head, 'Someone at the pub told me it's haunted.'

There's a pause, Annie looking at him with dark brows arched. Then, suddenly, she laughs, the sound warm and bright. 'Well,' she says, 'It might be now.'

He bursts into laughter and forgets the face, linking his arm in Annie's and pulling her close.

+

Somehow, the threat to the house gets him up, sends him reeling towards the window, where he pushes through the lace curtains

(rotting. he should do something about that. Ida would want him to. but.)

and presses his face against the window. Filthy. He should do something about that too. All the windows in this place are filthy. There are strangers in his lands again. Are these the new ones? They could destroy him. He's too weak.

Then he sees them. Man and woman. Something not quite right, not quite human about them. The word's on the tip of his tongue, the taste like poison that he doesn't want to swallow. The woman. He narrows his eyes. Drenched in blood.

He doesn't know why he thinks that. Only that it makes him shudder. _She_ makes him shudder, makes the whole house shudder, the lights flicker and the leaves wilt. _She_ makes him want to hide, to find somewhere small and dark and safe from prying eyes and hands.

But.

Here. The attic. It's safe. They circle the house, but they don't have keys. They can't get in and even if they could, they couldn't get into the attic. The man's head swivels, looks up and for a moment, it's like the man can _see_ him. The man's eyes widen comically, mouth dropping. The man jumps and nearly falls over.

He draws back, ducks down and only just lets his eyes see beyond the window sill. He's safe. They can't hurt him. Even if they tried, they can't. But that's a lie. He squeezes his eyes shut, focuses on the place he knows is safe. The tiny cellar room, entrance buried beneath decades of dirt and ivy and grass.

Opens his eyes. Curls into a tight, hard ball. They can't find him. He is safe. He will see them off the way he has seen all the others off. He will be safe and these lands will be safe with him. He has to get rid of them.

Strength, he thinks, might be surging through him, or only determination. This land is his. This land protects him and he protects it, the shape of his missing heart aches and burns at the thought of its loss. It's another war and he will not fail.

+

Monday comes faster than George thought possible. The estate agent is all apologies and cups of tea and biscuits as she goes through the last minute paperwork with Annie. George is impatient to get to the house, to sweep away the dust and cobwebs that are waiting for them before the movers arrive with their furniture. He's already gone to the supermarket and bought up big on cleaning products. They're sitting in the backseat in a bag, just _waiting_ to be used.

At last, the agent pulls out a set of keys and hands them over to Annie. They glitter in the electric lighting as Annie takes them and clasps them to her chest.

+

As they walk up the drive, George looks up, arms trembling with the weight of the bags in his hands. He dreads that he will see the face back at the window, that he will have to pay attention to the superstitious gossip of the old men. But the window is empty, the curtains hanging limply from their rod.

By some miracle, he manages to get up the two stairs leading up into the house without dropping the bags. Annie's in the kitchen, looking down at the floor, where great sheets of wallpaper lie scattered, the edges torn. When she sees him, she smiles and rushes over to help him, setting down the bags by the floor by the old sofa from Bristol. The movers have been and gone and their dirty boots have left marks all over the wallpaper on the kitchen floor and left tracks in thick dust.

'I liked that wallpaper,' Annie says, 'I was going to do the kitchen in those colours.'

'Pink and green?' George wrinkles his nose.

'What's wrong with that?' Annie demands, heading into the kitchen.

'It's a bit. I don't know.'

She gathers up the torn wallpaper into a pile. 'Why do you think it fell?'

'Probably didn't use enough glue.' George thinks of tea, decides it's more important the wallpaper. It's not that nice. He goes looking for the boxes with _kitchen_ written on the side in black permanent marker. They probably should have been more detailed in their labelling. Itemised everything so they could find everything quickly and efficiently.

Annie nudges the edge of one piece with her foot. 'It's ripped, though. If it had just fallen down, then.' Shrugging she turns around, 'What are you looking for?'

'The kettle. Thought we'd begin with a cup of tea.'

Annie beams and claps her hands. 'Oh, George,' she says, 'You really are a genius.'

+

Cleaning the house is hard-work. There's dust inches thick in some places and the windows are utterly filthy inside and out. It's not that they're that fussed on having everything unnaturally clean and perfect, no dust, everything gleaming, even the things that shouldn't be. But the house is filthy. They can't live with the kitchen in the state it is. Annie's just glad George has been so thoughtful and thorough in his purchase of cleaning products.

When the fumes get too much (and no one _ever_ told her that vampires and werewolves are susceptible to dust and cleaning product fumes), they go outside. It's quiet and still out there, a quiet Annie only half remembers from camping trips, lying awake in her sleeping bag, waiting for sleep to creep up her in the dead of night.

But it's not like that here. The sun's still out and a cool wind blows from the north. The land feels alive in its stillness, green and vivid even with the grey clouds cloaking most of the blue sky. She breathes in and the chemicals and dust are forgotten. She nudges George with one arm and smiles. Everything is undeniably good.

+

It is night when he leaves the ruined barn, a dark night and slowly crosses the ground between the overgrown gardens.

(absurdly, he remembers the sight of freshly turned earth and feels the tug in his chest, the desire to cry in a body that does not know how)

Somehow, even in the dark, he knows that the grass is thicker and greener where the gardens once were and if he chose to dig down deep enough, he would find the roots of long-forgotten plants. His fingers itch for a bayonet or a grenade, something to defend himself with if the worst should happen.

(he does not need to ask what the worst is. he remembers the war still. his mouth knows the weight and taste of a service revolver. the smell of shit and piss and blood and the mud. the endless noise _over and over and over and over and over and over and over again_.)

But the worst is over, he thinks. The war is over

(or so they say. he doesn't know who _they_ are. the war still lives in his head.)

and he is dead

(he thinks)

(dead and in hell.)

(he knows)

(the war was worse than hell)

and his da waited a year after they said it was over just to be sure that he was really dead, not just larking about, and then laid himself down in bed and died.

(why does he think of a light behind a door that wasn't a door when he thinks of his da? how does he know his da waited for him? why does he know this so well?)

He closes his eyes, thinks of the living room, the bare floorboards. He turns before he opens his eyes and nearly falls, walking into a sofa. The living room is cluttered with repulsive furniture and cardboard boxes and the whole house smells of something sharp and ugly. He chokes on it, covers his mouth. Above, he hears feet on creaking floorboards, the slow pad down the hall, dull thump of the bathroom door, the hiss of urination and the flush of the toilet.

So he is not alone again.

(and that rankles, that his haunting will be overrun with humans that sleep and shit and eat and try to take his house as their own.)

Which means he knows what to do.

It is a old trick he learnt. One he taught himself until it was, to him, as much as a weapon as a bayonet or a rifle or a revolver or his fists. He knew (knows) how to wield it to his advantage. These are his lands and he will go to war for them if he must.

+

George skids down the stairs, reaching out for his car keys. It's always that one thing, that one thing that he forgets or doesn't think of when he's in the shop. _God_. How could he forget mould killer? The bath is a mess. A mess that he doesn't want to investigate too closely. The sooner he gets out, the sooner he can do the bathroom properly.

His car keys are missing.

'Annie?' He calls out, 'Have you seen my keys?'

'What?' Annie is dumping the contents of her handbag onto the kitchen table, 'Have you seen my book?'

'N-no,' George frowns, 'I thought you took it up to bed with you?'

Annie frowns, rummaging through her bag again. 'I did, but the lighting was crap so I came down here to read for a bit and I _thought_ I left it down here.'

'Well. I haven't seen it.' George tries a quick grin, doesn't like the feel of it. 'Anyway, I need to go to the shops – where's the car keys?'

'They're on the kitchen bench, next to the house keys,' Without looking, Annie gestures towards the puddle of sunlight the house keys are lying in. The car keys are not there, or anywhere else on the bench. Annie frowns as she looks over. 'Well. They were.'

George frowns. 'I didn't touch them.'

'Well, I didn't.' Annie sighs, begins sorting through her bag again. She drops her wallet back in, sighs and runs a hand through her hair until it's a frazzled mess.

George's frown grows deeper. He thinks of the old man – _Colm_ – and his words about the ghost. The face at the attic window. They can't get up there, the trapdoor swollen in place.

'Annie—'

'Don't say it. Ghosts don't exist.'

'Technically, neither do vampires and werewolves. Yet here we are.' George looks up towards the stairs. 'Who's to say ghosts don't?'

'Herrick would've told me—'

George scoffs. 'You think Herrick tells you everything? You think Herrick knows everything?'

Shrugging, Annie sighs. 'Look, let's just forget this and get on with the work, okay? The keys will turn up. You haven't really started looking. And I didn't really like the book that much anyway. There's a lot of work to do, so let's just focus on that instead.'

George sighs and looks out the window. It's been raining really hard since last night. He'd curled up in bed after going for a pee and it'd hit. It'd been so sudden it had seemed strange, but the land looks even prettier in the rain, especially now the windows are clean.

+

The car keys don't turn up for three days. He finds them about three-quarters down in a box of books and DVDs he is slowly unpacking. Annie's book turns up wedged between the bed frame and the mattress in the spare room that will eventually serve as Annie's office.

They are but the first things to go. The tea goes missing. A once-frozen pizza ends up stuck to the living room ceiling. Three bags of chicken fillets are scattered over Annie's desk and rotten steaks are left in the bathtub.

'Should we hire an exorcist?' George asks. He covers his mouth with his hand and barely avoids vomiting all over the bathroom tiles as he pulls up bits of steak and dumps them into the bag Annie's holding. 'If there's a ghost—'

'I'm not being kicked out of my house by a disembodied spirit,' Annie says. 'Its mainly harmless.'

' _Harmless_ ,' George mutters. Next time he's in town, he's going to visit the library and see if there's do-it-yourself-exorcisms on Google. Because he can't spend another day pulling putrid bits of raw meat out of their bathtub. He'd only just gotten it clean, after all.

+

'You won't get the ghost out like that,' Colm shuffles slowly over to George at the cafe, pressing a finger against the stack of print-outs. 'The last lot that were in before you even had the priest go and say a prayer. Didn't work. They hired a physic to kick the poor bugger out. Didn't work, but then I reckon that bloke was a charlatan.'

'What will get the ghost out?' George asks, lowering his voice.

Colm gives him a dirty stare. 'You tried asking nicely?'

George sighs, fiddles with the controls on the coffee machine. Colm laughs, the sound bright but cracked with age-old weariness.

'Look, the ghost's got a reason for being there. He doesn't do much harm. Just let him be and he'll let you be.'

'And that's clearly worked well for us, right? And everyone else that's tried to live in that house?' George says, voice sharp. Suddenly, he thinks, there is no ghost, just the whole town playing pranks on them and laughing behind their backs. He grabs up the print-outs, dumps them in the trash. Colm blinks up at him innocently, picking at a bit loose of loose, dry skin on a knuckle.

+

It's not just the things that go missing.

It's the _sounds_. Thumps in the middle of the night, noises that weren't just the sound of an old house settling. Weeping. Laughter. A deep, guttural groan that reverberates through the chimney. George grits his teeth and thinks about the possibility there's a madman in the house, waiting to kill them. But they make careful sweeps of the rooms and Annie swears that she can sense nothing but them.

They go out for a walk and find big, black words scrawled across the front door. _Get out_ , it reads. The fruit bowl is smashed up, glass scattered from the kitchen to the living room.

They shut the doors tight, bolting them from the inside, and wake up in the morning to them flung wide open, wildlife tracking its way in. George shoos out a duck while Annie tries to clean bird shit off the fire grate.

In the middle of the night, they hear the door slam. Footsteps in the attic that they can't get into.

George sands back the door, paints it green, goes away and comes back to find _leave_ painted in pink across it. He re-paints it again, with gritted teeth, and re-considers hiring a psychic or a priest just to do _something_.

They go into town for supplies and come home to the coffee table smashed up on the floor and the toothpaste tube exploded in the bathroom.

Then there's the dead duck that's been dismembered on the kitchen table, blood streaked from wall to wall, ceiling to floor.

He should call the police. Anyone. Something's got to give.

+

They're not leaving.

He has done _everything_ short of killing them to get them to leave and still they stay.

What is it about them, he wonders, why do they stay. He breaks something, hides something, and they just repair the damage. They talk about him, call him _mad_ and other words he doesn't understand. Why do they stay.

He panics. He hides at the bottom of the cellar and counts to ten over and over again. He needs them out. He needs them out.


	4. Chapter 3

The sky clears to a faded blue one morning. Annie stands at the kitchen counter, wrapped up in a thick, woollen coat, buttering toast for breakfast. She thinks she might go and sit out in the yard, enjoy the dry warmth of the sun on her back, never mind the sodden, cold grass squelching beneath her feet. She peers out of the window and, hearing George stumbling down the stairs, cannot help the fond smile that crosses her lips.

'Morning! The rain's finally stopped.'

'I saw,' George's voice is rough with sleep.

Annie squints, something catching her eye amongst the overgrown mass of vegetation. She squints. It's a face – a man. _Shit._

'George,' she says, voice slow and cautious, 'There's someone out in the garden.'

Whoever it is, he's edging closer to the house. It seems crazy, but he's wearing an old soldier's uniform and he's staring at the house with such longing in his expression. But Annie doesn't feel afraid of him, not really.

She puts down the knife and turns to George. 'Come on.'

' _What?_ Are you _actually_ – oh god.'

They go out, George armed with an umbrella, and the man flinches at the sound of the door clanging shut. Annie squints at him, the sun's light glaringly bright. He looks like a soldier from World War I. His hair is dark beneath his helmet, his skin smudged with dirt and blood. His dark eyes (at least Annie _thinks_ they're dark) widen as they come towards him.

'Hi,' Annie makes her voice cheerful, but not overly so. 'Can we help you?'

' _Annie_ ,' George hisses, then turns to the other man, face as severe and voice as harsh as he can make them. 'What are you doing here?'

The soldier slowly turns his head towards George, eyes narrowing. He's very wary, Annie thinks, reminding her of a cat pacing in a cage, constantly pushing itself against the door, desperate to be let out.

She takes a deep breath. 'It's all right, whatever it is. We can help you.' She smiles in what she hopes is a pleasant, welcoming way. She's forming a plan: get him inside, call the police and get him taken away to be cared for properly. 'Why don't you come inside and have a nice cup of tea? A shower, maybe?'

' _Annie_ ,' George hisses again, 'He's a trespasser. He could be a _serial killer_.'

The man's lips twist, emotions warring across his face. He's quite handsome beneath the mud, but his face contorts. Anger, disgust and fear. _Fear_. His fear makes her fingers itch in the cold air.

Then he vanishes.

He's there, and then he's gone, leaving nothing but the cold air. His feet have left no marks in the soft crowd, the grass unbent where he stood. How is it even possible, she wonders. She turns to George, mouth opening, but no words come out.

+

They can see him.

_See him._

No one sees him.

He bites his lip so hard he's surprised there's no blood, no pain, even though it's been years

(how many? must be verging onto a century now.)

since anyone saw him.

_They can see him._

It's impossible.

He needs to figure this out. Work out what's changed. What had they called themselves? One of the words was like a barb on his tongue, something he vaguely remembers. Reading in his bunk while the world ricochets and burns around him, mud rising to sink him. No. It was before the mud. Before the trenches. Before that place whose name echoes and echoes and echoes in his mind.

He's lost track, again. His fingers dig into the dirt at the bottom of the garden shed, through the rusty remains of a pitchfork, the scythe beside him. No one sees him. But they can.

Everything has changed.

+

'You can see me?'

George jerks and swears, nearly pisses all over the floor. He twists around so fast that the man – the man from before, out in the yard, the vanishing man in the soldiers' uniform takes a step back. He's in the bloody toilet with George and he most definitely wasn't there when George switched the light on.

'Sorry,' the man says, not sounding sorry at all, 'I've been—' He stops. 'It's been doing my head in. Trying to figure this out. You can see me. No one sees me.' He grins, sudden and sharp. ' _And_ you can hear me. This is incredible. I don't know how this works.'

'Well, I think that makes two of us.' George looks around the room. Maybe there's a secret door. It's an old house, probably has loads of secret tunnels. Well, it would do if his life was suddenly a _Famous Five_ book. His life might make more sense in a _Famous Five_ book too – not the werewolf bit, obviously. That's just bonkers. 'How did you get in here?'

'I wonder if everyone can see me now.' The man turns to the window, stares out at the thick dark of night. George thinks of calling Annie because this man could be a crazy axe-murderer and he'd really like not to be killed in the loo. He edges towards the door, just in time for the man to spin around, facing him and George goes stock-still. _Act casual_ , he thinks.

The man looks stricken, though, 'Please don't call her. I can't – not with her around.'

'Annie?' George blinks, remembers to flush the toilet. 'She's, she's fine – she wouldn't hurt you. She wouldn't hurt anyone.'

The man shrugs and doesn't look convinced. He goes back to staring out the window. He looks fragile, not quite there. There's something pathetic about him and he's not obviously armed. If, George thinks, it comes to a fight – well, there wouldn't much of a fight at all. It's a thought that lends him courage.

'Who are you?' George demands. 'If you answer that, I won't call her.'

'Dead,' says the man, and stares at the window as well. He looks young, very young, beneath the shadow of his helmet. 'A ghost.'

George makes the slow, cautious walk to the sink and washes his hands. The man tracks his movements carefully out of the corner of his eye. George swallows.

'Are you sure?'

'Oh, I can walk through walls and _everything_ ,' the man rolls his eyes, 'If I want to. There's easier ways, though. How do you think I got into this room?'

'How did you die?' This is the next on George's list of questions. It only vaguely occurs to him that it's hardly polite to ask anyone how they died.

The man doesn't seem to take offence, though. He plucks at his uniform with two white fingers. 'I didn't wear this for fun, you know. France, 1917. Killed in action. There was a forest. I don't remember anything more than that.'

George rubs his hands over his face. He feels absurd in his pyjamas. If this man is telling the truth, then he's talking to a veteran of the Great War and he feels like he should show some respect. Go downstairs, make them both cups of teas and biscuits and sit him down on the couch, too afraid to ask any more questions.

'Okay,' George says slowly, 'Do you have a name?'

The man tilts his head, says nothing. In the mirror, George can see their bodies reflected. They both look very pale, but the man's not quite there, a bit blurry around the edges. And George means that literally – he seems to fade into the room. His dark eyes are so far away.

'Mitchell,' he says, slowly, blinking, 'I was Mitchell. I don't always remember.'

'Um,' George says, 'The house was owned by the Mitchell family—'

The man looks very uncertain, very fragile and so young. How old was he when he died, George wonders. He remembers stories about the soldiers that lied about their age just so they could fight in the war, thinking it noble, and getting the shock of their lives.

'I don't remember,' he says, voice quiet, 'I don't.'

'It's all right,' George says gently, reaching out for him. 'Why don't we go down to the lounge room, sit down and talk for a bit?'

Mitchell watches his hand warily, watches as George presses it to his shoulder. He can't tell who's more surprised his hand doesn't go straight through and out the other side. Mitchell's breath hitches for a moment.

'Okay,' George says, quietly, and risks squeezing Mitchell's shoulder. He can feel the faint suggestion of the rough weave of Mitchell's uniform beneath his fingers, the shift of bone and muscle beneath his fingers, but it—

'I can feel that,' Mitchell breathes, suddenly, and he looks like he might cry.

'Okay,' George says, again, wondering if it really is _okay_. Mitchell's eyes flutter shut. 'Let's go downstairs, hmm?'

Somehow, they make it downstairs and George flicks on the light in the lounge room while Mitchell paces the room in slow circles. George takes his wrist and pulls him down onto the sofa.

'Do you want a cup of tea?'

Mitchell shakes his head, risks what might be an apologetic smile. 'I can't drink. Or eat. Goes right through me. If you want one—'

'Me? No. No. I'm fine.' George sits down next to Mitchell. He takes Mitchell's hand again. It's unbelievably cold, but Mitchell is dead, his body long-lost. 'Was it you who was doing all those things in the house? The paint on the door, taking our things – the bloody duck.'

Mitchell swallows, then nods. 'Yes. I – I wanted you out.'

'Why?'

'Because this is my house,' Mitchell hisses, and suddenly he's not next to George, but next to the cold fire grate, arms crossed over his chest and, obviously, ghosts can do that as well as walking through walls.

'It was your house,' George says, slowly, 'Annie bought it a couple of months ago. It's her name on the deed. And you, I'm very sorry to say, are _dead_.'

Mitchell sneers. 'Typical fucking English.' He turns away, beginning to pace in a tight circle by the fire. 'I've been here for so long, and you come here after and spend, what, a few weeks here, and claim it for yourself? You – you want to kick me out. I was _born_ here, I worked the fields, and when I died, I bloody well got sent here instead of, of, of – I don't fucking know. And now you want to get rid of me!'

'Whoa,' George says, holding up his hands as if that proves he's innocent, 'Just – just calm down a bit. I didn't say we wanted you out, did I? I just meant we'd have to share. I mean. It's a big property, there's a spare room.'

'A spare room? Jesus!' Mitchell laughs, but it's cold and hard. He covers his face in his hands.

'Look,' George says, 'Just come and sit down again, yeah? We'll sort something out.'

'No,' Mitchell says, 'We won't.'

There's something in his pale face, something cold and resigned, and George just knows that he's moments away from disappearing again. There's got to be something he can say or do to make Mitchell stay, to settle things between them.

'Mitchell.'

The ghost flinches, one hand going up to rub at his brow. He looks at George, bewildered, confused. Saying Mitchell's name doesn't help, doesn't change anything. He might have forgotten his name again. George needs to find something to make this work.

'Okay.' George takes a breath. 'Explain this to me. I get why the house is important to you. But why do you need to be alone? Because from here, it just looks like you're a very lonely, very sad man. And I don't know why such anyone like that would want to be alone.'

For a moment, nothing. Silence. Mitchell straightens, his body going still and quiet, his mouth parting as if to answer.

'George?'

Mitchell's head jerks up at the sound of Annie's voice, eyes wide with fear, mouth clamping shut, and then he's gone.

_Fuck_ , George thinks, but it's not enough, so he says it out loud. ' _Fuck_.'

'George?' Annie comes down the stairs, her eyes round, 'I thought I heard voices.'

'Yeah,' says George. He looks around the room, remembers Mitchell's fear of her. Maybe he shouldn't tell her the truth, not right yet. Wait until Mitchell trusts him more. 'So did I.'

Annie's eyes dart around the room. There's nothing amiss, not really, apart from his lie. _Why did he lie?_ For Mitchell's sake? He doesn't understand.

'And?' she says, 'Was there anything?'

'Ghost must've turned on the TV,' he says, 'I just turned it off.'

Annie glances at the TV, pulls the belt of her dressing gown tighter. She doesn't look quite convinced and George doesn't want to talk it out now. He fakes a yawn and gets up from the sofa with an exaggerated stretch.

'Right. I've got work in the morning – better get back to bed.' He ducks around her and heads up the stairs, not sure how exactly he's going to go back to sleep.

+

For the next two weeks, nothing happens.

Annie watches the house with narrowed eyes, waiting for something to leap out at her – some proof that the ghost is still with them. Was them seeing him that did it? If he's not a ghost, which seems unlikely now that she and George saw him vanish into thin air, does it mean it's been a curtailed prank or that a madman has been captured or driven away?

George is quiet, walking around the house, and Annie thinks there's something he's not telling her.

And she is so hungry.

She cannot face going out, leaving the solitude of the house and the attached lands, fearful that if she sees someone (a human someone, that is), she will have no strength in her to resist. She will just feed.

Feed. That word is beautiful to her, but unspeakably cruel. _Feed_. Like she wouldn't be killing anyone if she just fed on their blood.

Her hands keep shaking.

+

There's a full moon tonight. Annie watches it rise from the kitchen window, shivering in the cold of night. She knows George is out there somewhere. The first full moon here, she thinks and risks a small smile. It'll be good for him, to have the hectares of wilderness for the wolf to run in. And it's safe, they never see anyone about, not even in their walks that Annie's relatively sure go into land that isn't part of the farm.

She shudders at the howl that rips through the air. Part of her - a whole, whopping great big part of her – longs to go out, to go to George and comfort him. But the rest of her knows the dangers. He could rip her to shreds without thinking. Not George, but the wolf. The wolf isn't George. It's a beast, something that knows only instinct.

Nothing else.

Sometimes she wonders if she's not becoming more and more like that.

+

He.

He, Mitchell,

(and he knows that's not his real name, not really, his surname most likely, but everyone went by their surnames in the war, if they didn't go by their rank)

shimmies up the tree, watching with narrowed eyes as the man push on through the grass. _George_ , that's his name. _George_. He says it out loud, too quiet to be heard, and George doesn't turn. He likes the name. He likes knowing a name and knowing the face it belongs to. It rolls around in his head well, _George, George, George_.

(better than other things)

George is nice. He seems to care about Mitchell, and there's no reason why he should. The people who cared are gone now. Dead in the ground, gone through their doors. Mitchell's still here, counting the countless days, and he doesn't know why.

George stops in the middle of an old field. He stares up at the moon, body growing stiff and rigid, and then he _screams_. Mitchell reels, nails digging into the trunk of the tree, leaving no mark. George's body is contorting, changing, he's curling into a foetal position, and he won't stop—

Mitchell's breath hitches in his throat, and George's growing claws, a snout pushing its way out of George's face. He won't stop screaming. This isn't right, this isn't right, oh Christ, oh Christ.

+

George wakes to the smell of smoke and a blanket over his body. He opens his eyes and looks up at a blue sky, no cloud to be seen and sits up, feeling long grass beneath his legs, trying to rub the sleep from his eyes. There's a small fire burning, ringed carefully with uneven stones and the ghost is hunched over it, poking at it with a stick.

'Er,' George says, very succinctly, 'Mitchell?'

Mitchell turns to him, brows raised. The helmet's gone and his skin is free from mud and clean, which must be a good sign. His voice is soft when he utters a quiet _hmm_.

'Um,' is all George can manage in reply, not sure where to start. Succinctness isn't something that comes quickly in the early morning, much less after the night of the full moon, the wolf unleashed. The _how did you know where I am_ , the w _hat happened_ and the _why are you here_ questions stall in his head.

'I'll leave you to it,' says Mitchell, standing, 'I – your clothes are in the bag.' George looks, there's a plastic bag with his clothes in within reach. 'The blanket I took from the house, so you should probably bring it back.'

George sits up, squinting at their surrounds. It's very pretty, very green and very unfamiliar, 'I – I don't even know where we are.'

'About two miles north from the house,' says Mitchell. He answers quickly, voice tinged with a slight note of pride. He points beyond George, into the distance, 'Head in that direction. Once you see the old barn, the house isn't that far beyond it.'

'Right.' George reaches for the bag, drags his clothes on beneath the blanket. Everything is still there, even the old pair of underpants he'd worn specifically because losing them wouldn't matter. 'Thank you. Sorry. I should have said that earlier.'

Mitchell drops his stick into the fire and turns his eyes over the land, considering. 'It's fine.'

'I guess you saw it,' says George, 'The wolf.'

'Yes.' Mitchell doesn't look at him.

'I'm sorry.'

'What for?' Mitchell raises his brows, back growing straighter, and yet still he doesn't look at George.

'I don't know. The wolf – it isn't nice. It's—'

'It's fine,' Mitchell says again, voice quieter, 'It's hardly the worst thing I've seen.'

George almost asks what could be worse, but doesn't dare.

'It didn't—' _see you_ , George thinks, _see you and try to attack you_ , though he's not sure why that matters. Mitchell is clearly okay, a bit paler in the morning light, but still whole and okay, and the wolf probably couldn't hurt him if it tried. '—see you.'

'No.' Mitchell glances down at the fire, head tilted, dark eyes considering.

'Will you come back with me?' George asks, voice loud and sudden. Mitchell's head whips up and he stares. George doesn't know how far he should push Mitchell, how much he should care. But Mitchell is here with him, and obviously cared enough to light a fire, collect George's clothes _and_ bring him a blanket. 'I mean. I'm not great with directions. I'd get lost even if you drew me a map.'

Those considering eyes turn to him for a brief moment, Mitchell smiles for a briefer moment still. 'All right,' he says softly.

+

George stops them by the stream, pretending that he needs a break, body weak after the change though it's not true. He just wants to talk with Mitchell again. He crouches down as close to the muddy bank as seems safe and bends down, capturing icy-cold water in his hands and drinking. He eyes Mitchell out of the corner of his eye, thinking that he looks more solid now, even as the sky's beginning to cloud over.

'So, are you going to answer my question?'

Mitchell glances back at him, brows growing heavy. 'You haven't asked me a question.'

'I did,' George says, 'But you did a runner before you could answer it. Why do you want Annie and me to pack our bags and go? Why do you want to be alone again?'

'Habit,' Mitchell says. He drops down beside George and holds his hands out towards the stream. 'Why do you want to stay so badly?'

George sighs. He thinks about pressing Mitchell, what he means by _habit_ but it's miraculous enough already that Mitchell hasn't simply disappeared again. 'When I first got this – the _curse_ – I lost everything. It wasn't anything really special, but it was something quiet and normal and _good_. I had everything all planned out, you know?'

He chances a glance at Mitchell, waiting for him to agree. It was what everything wanted, wasn't it? A career path, the person you were going to marry and have kids with and maybe it wouldn't last, but it would be good for a time. Mitchell stares down at his hands in the water, the water passing through them, face creased with heavy lines.

'Then there were these vampires and they wanted to kill me, so—'

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Mitchell flinch.

'Are you okay?'

'Yeah,' Mitchell rubs a hand across his brow. 'Go on.'

'Oh. Sorry.' George inches up the bank, sits down on the grass. Mitchell follows him after a moment. 'Right. So they wanted to kill me, and Annie saved me. But I had to leave what little life I'd made for myself, because they were going to come back for me.'

'Is that what they do?' Mitchell asks, quiet and distant, 'Vampires? If they don't get you the first time, they come back for you?'

'Y-yeah, I suppose so.' George sighs. 'Are you sure you're all right? You're looking weird.'

Mitchell is all hunched down, tucked down low as if he's making himself as small as possible. But he manages a smile and shakes his head. 'I'm fine.'

'Right.' George sighs. 'Anyway, so I rebuilt my life again and things were going okay for a bit, then Annie said she wanted to move here – and she's the last good thing I have left. So of course I went. But I can't start over _again_ , Mitchell. Every time I think I've settled down, sorted out what my life's going to be, I lose it and I can't go through it again.'

'And... you want to stay here because you can't bear to lose everything – or nearly everything again?'

'Yeah.' George blinks down at his laps, rubs a hand over his face. A few tears have escaped and if Mitchell has noticed, he is decent enough to pretend not to. 'But my life is always going to be _and then what_ , you know? I'm always going to end up losing.'

'Oh,' Mitchell says, voice soft and dull.

George glances over at Mitchell, sees the dullness in his eyes, and opens his mouth to say something else before changing his mind. His mouth clamps shut.

Mitchell looks up at the sky, frowning, 'You should go. It's going to rain soon.'

'Again?!' George scrambles up. 'Does it _ever_ stop raining here?'

Mitchell's face splits into a smile – the first that isn't frozen and forced, it feels natural as the sun's rising. Then he outright laughs, genuine and amused, and some warmth takes up residence in the pit of George's heart.

+

'Come in,' George says, when they reach the edge of the gardens, when beyond it lies the house and George does not need him anymore.

He shakes his head. Not yet. Not with her in there.

'Why not?'

(he can't figure it out. how can he explain.)

He shakes his head again.

' _Mitchell_ ,' George hisses, reaches for him to give him a rough shake. 'For god's sake, you'll be fine.'

He, _Mitchell_ ,

(he must remember that. his name, or close enough.)

pulls back.

'No,' he says, makes his voice strong when it wants to be weak, 'Maybe later. Not now.'

George sighs and twists his head back to the house. Longing crosses his face. It's been spitting rain since they passed the barn and it's been growing steadily stronger. And inside is George's friend. The vampire. Annie.

He shudders. A clap of thunder makes them both jump. Lightening follows.

' _Shit_ , that's close,' George is staring at the sky.

'You should go,' Mitchell is staring at the ground.

'Oh, but—' George sighs. 'Yes. I'll see you around, right?'

It almost seems like George means it, his face pleading. He can't mean it. Who would?

He smiles, close-lipped, and shrugs. 'Maybe.'


	5. Chapter 4

He, Mitchell, lies on his back in the attic, watching the sun's light stream in, making patterns on the slanted ceiling. Below, he can hear them – George and the other one, the woman whose name he doesn't remember. He only remembers that he fears her. They sound nice, he thinks, they're laughing about something on the stairs. He knows George is kind, or kind enough, but—

He rolls onto his belly, breathes in the dust and the smell of old floorboards. There's rot in them, rot in the whole house, and if they've won, he should tell them about the rot so they can get it fixed. He closes his eyes, presses his face and hands flat against the boards.

Abruptly, he looks up, reaches for the old tin box, brushing stray particles of rust away before forcing the catch open. The hinges are rusted. Is everything in this house, everything he touches, falling apart?

A branch thuds against the side of the house in a particularly strong and sudden gust of window. For a moment, the noise below him stops. Then the door, and George's voice, high with indignation.

He should go out and see the damage.

(it doesn't matter. it's not his concern anymore.)

Slowly, carefully, he lifts the faded photographs out from the box. He sorts through them with pale, slow fingers, and studies the faces. He recognises his own, but no one else's. On the back of one is written _Ida, 1916_ in loopy curls and faded ink. He knows the name. _Ida._ But nothing else.

1916 was a year of the war. He had been in France. He had been a sergeant. He remembers the mud, the thin wooden boards that they balanced on to avoid being sucked down and he remembered what it was like when someone fell, knowing that they would drown or suffocate. He remembers Hegarty, remembers the rough weave of his uniform sleeve as he, Mitchell, had grabbed him in an attempt to keep him from sinking. The boy was only 16 and he'd cried and screamed for his mammy, eyes wild and desperate, fingers clawing at Mitchell's arm.

He'd failed.

For days afterward, he would lift his sleeve and study the four gouges in his arm, scabbing over and healing without a scar. He'd wished they hadn't, wished his failure had forever been marked into his skin. Sometimes, though, he can still feel the wound.

He still remembers about Hegarty's eyes.

Hanley. Arthur Hanley. He was the one who had dragged Mitchell back. Who said, _we fucking well need you, you useless bastard_ and pushed him on. In the next trench, Hanley had sat him down and made him a coffee that taste of spit and dandruff and mud, but it was hot in his hands as the world fell apart. Hanley's dead.

(he thinks he may have killed hanley)

(but he doesn't remember)

(maybe they died together.)

He looks up. The sky's gone dark. Thick, black clouds smother the sun. He sighs, softly, and returns the photos to their box. There are a few scraps of paper at the bottom of the tin box, but he leaves them untouched. There's not enough light to see them by.

+

Annie starts boiling the kettle the moment she hears George thump-thump down the stairs. Well, she _assumes_ its George on the stairs. Either it's the ghost making an unlikely comeback or George has finished in the shower and is ready for breakfast. Regardless, she'll need a cup of tea. She pulls down the box of tea-bags – not the brand she prefers, but the local supermarket doesn't stock more than the basics – and her own mug. She's got something to tell George.

'George?' she calls hand hovering over his mug, 'You want a cuppa?'

'Love one.' George is grinning when he appears in the doorway, though his expression flickers at the site of the kitchen's walls. He sighs. 'We've got to do something in here. It's just... depressing.'

'I was thinking blue,' Annie says, 'The wallpaper's unsalvageable. But blue would be lovely.'

She dumps a teabag in each mug, adds sugar to hers and gets the milk out.

George squints around the room. 'Yeah, maybe. That'd be nice. I think.'

The kettle clicks off and she quickly fixes them both mugs as George opens the fridge and studies the contents.

'Right,' George sighs. 'I'm starving. You want eggs and bacon for breakfast?'

'We've got no bacon – but eggs will be fine.'

For a moment, she listens to George clatter around in the cupboards, coaxing the temperamental stove to life and cracking eggs into the frypan. Then she takes a sip of her tea and leans against the bench as she watches George's back bent over the stove. She can't wait any longer – she needs to tell him. _Immediately._

'I'm going into town today,' she says, grinning even though he can't see her.

'What for? Bacon?' George twists his head over his shoulder. 'Please say it's for bacon.'

'Well, it's not.' Annie sighs. It's not quite the reaction she was looking for. 'But I'll pick some up if you want. No, I'm going to do a bit of research. I'm going to find out who our ghost is.'

'Oh.' George's silent for a long moment, twisting back to attend to the eggs. He crosses over to the toaster, dumps a couple of slices of bread in and turns it on. 'How are you going to do that?'

'Well, if he was in the First World War, there's bound to be some record of him.' Annie sighs, runs a hand through her hair before narrowing her eyes at George's back. 'You don't seem to be that keen.'

'I just—' George glances up at the kitchen wall, then sighs. 'He's left us alone. Why not return the favour?'

She frowns. _She_ wasn't the one who ended up vomiting after clearing away the bits of rotten meat or cleaned the blood off the walls. 'I would've been thought you'd be all for it. I wasn't the one who tried to find do-it-yourself exorcisms. '

'Yeah, well.' George grabs the egg slide and carefully dishes out the eggs. Annie's amazed he's found a way of doing it without ever breaking the yolks. 'That was when he was trying to kick us out. He's probably here for a reason.'

Annie shakes her head. 'I'm not talking about finding some way to kick him out or piss him off, George. I just want to know who he is. Give him a name.'

'Right.' George sighs heavily. 'Sorry. My head, it's all—' he makes an indecipherable gesture and laughs.

+

George pours himself a glass of orange juice. He's not sure how to take the whole thing about Annie investigating the ghost. If he should find Mitchell and tell him what Annie's doing. Still, maybe she'll find nothing. He doesn't know whether to hope for that or not. It would be _good_ to know, to put some things at rest. Maybe that's the reason Mitchell's still here. Maybe he needs some form of recognition.

Or maybe he needs to paint the bloody kitchen.

'The floorboards are full of rot, you know.'

George drops the glass, turning around just to see the faint look of disapproval and disappointment on Mitchell's face at the sight of orange juice spreading across the floorboards.

'Well,' Mitchell says, 'That _won't_ fix it.'

'You _shouldn't_ do that!' George cries, running back into the kitchen for a great wad of paper towels.

Mitchell gets down on the floor with him, takes his own handful of paper towels in attempt to help clean up the mess. He's not very good at it. 'I'll remember to ring the doorbell next time.'

George laughs and pushes Mitchell away, sopping up the last of the juice. The floor will need mopping, to get rid of the stickiness, but that can wait. 'Anything as long as you stop scarring the crap out of me.'

'Sorry.'

George stares at him, then, in a feeble voice, says, 'What was that about the floorboards?'

'They're full of rot. Need replacing.'

'Oh. Right. Thanks.' George glances back into the kitchen. 'I'd offer you a drink, but...'

'It'd only make another mess.' Mitchell shrugs. 'It's fine. I just wanted to tell you that.'

'You don't mind if I—'

Mitchell shakes his head. 'God, no.'

George busies himself in the kitchen, rinsing out his glass and then deciding he needs a fresh glass. He grabs one still draining and then quickly pours juice in it. Mitchell wanders in and picks at a loose bit of old paint, then sighs.

'I wanted to paint this. I don't have enough paint. You'll have to do that as well.'

'Didn't you like the wallpaper?'

'It was hideous.'

'I wasn't sorry to see it on the floor.'

Mitchell grins at him and the tension in his back seems to release. Then he shakes his head and the smile vanishes. 'I also came to tell you that you'd won.'

'Won what?' George shakes his head in bewilderment.  
  
'The house. You've beaten me. I gave it a good go, but.' He shrugs. 'You had the advantage from the start.'

'That's not true,' George's voice rises several octaves and he moves so fast to get to Mitchell that it feels like he's a cartoon character, all dramatic gestures that aren't good enough. He grabs Mitchell by the shoulders and shakes him. The body is less firm beneath his hands; his fingers seem to sink in deeper than they did the morning after the full moon. 'It's _not_. This was never a competition. Christ, do you think we want to kick you out?'

Mitchell blinks, licks his lips.

'Look, I don't know what I can say. But I—' George sighs. 'I don't want you to lose.'

'I always lose. Christ, you think I like this? I don't remember _anything_ , George. I lose _everything_. I look at photos I saved and I _still_ save because I know they meant something once, but I don't recognise anyone in them. The only thing I remember is the war, and believe me, I try not to remember that.'

'But that's not going to get any better if you leave.'

Mitchell pulls away from George, jerking so firmly out of George's hold that George stumbles. He turns around, hoping Mitchell hasn't disappeared again, but he's standing by the sink, arms crossed over his chest.

'Do you have _any_ idea what it's like to be a ghost? It's been, what, ninety-two years since I died, and I've been alone all this time.'

'Maybe if you hadn't kicked them all out—'

Mitchell grits his teeth. The lights flicker and a glass explodes, showering tiny pieces of glass around them. It catches the light and for a moment it almost seems beautiful.

'I kicked them out because I _couldn't stand it_. They were all _human_. They couldn't _see_ me. I was invisible and let me tell you, that hurts more than being alone. What do you think it's like? Screaming at the world and being ignored all the fucking time? So yeah, I kicked them out and if you can't understand that, that's your fucking problem.'

'Okay,' George takes a deep breath. He eyes Mitchell for a long moment and takes another deep breath. 'I'm sorry you went through that. I am. I am _so_ sorry. But it's not like that, this time, is it? Because we _can_ see you.'

Mitchell shakes his head. He looks on the verge of tears and outside, rain starts pouring down, lashing against the windows. Mitchell covers his face with his hands.

George moves closer, slowly. He tries to remember the talk about approaching injured wildlife. Do it slow, do it carefully, make yourself seem unthreatening. But it doesn't mean anything. He stops within reach of Mitchell, takes a breath and screws up his courage. He pulls Mitchell into a hug, arms tight around his shoulders.

For a moment, Mitchell holds himself stiffly, body not really there. But then he moves, wrapping his arms around George, head slumping down onto George's shoulder. Almost immediately, he becomes more solid. His hair smells of gunpowder, mist and something warm, like smoke from a wood fire.

'It's okay,' George says, 'It's okay. You're not alone anymore.'

Mitchell shakes, but doesn't say anything. George sighs into his ear.

'Come back to the house. We'll share it. We'll figure something out. You can have my room if you want.'

'I don't need a room,' Mitchell says, inhaling sharply. 'There's the attic.'

George blinks, thinking of the trapdoor swollen shut, but it doesn't matter. 'We'll do it up for you, then.'

'I can help. I was good at it.'

'You've already helped by getting rid of that awful wallpaper.'

Mitchell laughs, burying his face in George's shoulder again. Then, slowly, he pulls back and George pretends not to notice the way he hides his face, wiping away the tears. He stares down at the faint traces of moisture on his fingers with something like wonder.

+

They have cleaned up the broken glass and mopped the floor. Mitchell is good, he thinks, more talkative, and he's downright funny at times. George has to push him onto the sofa before he starts ripping up floorboards and sanding the walls. George thinks, it's like Mitchell's scared of being found wanting.

'Oh, I can't do much more today,' George says, putting his feet up over Mitchell's legs to stop him from getting up, 'It's meant to be my day off. And don't you keep working, you'll only make me feel guilty.'

George picks up one of Annie's decorating magazines, glances at the cover and begins flicking through the glossy pages. Everything looks clean and too perfect, even down to the bits of artful clutter. Everything looks too expensive for them, too. He'd settle for something that's comfortable, however cheap.

'What do you think?' He passes it over to Mitchell who takes it somewhat gingerly. 'See anything you like?'

'Not really.'

'Thought so.'

'Though some of it is better than your choice of furniture.' Mitchell nudges the coffee table with a foot. 'I could make better. I _have_ made better.'

'I'll have you know that it was five quid at a garage sale.'

Mitchell doesn't look impressed. 'Must've seen you coming.'

George laughs. 'Okay, you just volunteered to make us a new coffee table. I've got a shift at the cafe tomorrow, you can come with me and pick out the timber you want. _And_ help me explain why we need new floorboards.' He thinks of something, turns to Mitchell, 'Wait. _Can_ you leave?'

'I don't know,' Mitchell says, quietly, 'I don't think I can. I've never wanted to.'

'Why not?'

Mitchell shrugs, looking out across the room. George wonders what he sees, what he thinks of how they've furnished the place. 'There was always something else around here that needed doing.'

He's not telling the truth, or at least, not the whole truth, but George doesn't want to press him. He can't risk another upset, not so soon after finally making progress with Mitchell. Another hug might not be able to fix things so well. Another hug might not be another bandaid for the mess of hurt inside Mitchell.

+

Annie checks the sheet of paper one last time, runs a finger over the name she's written in black ink below the photo. It feels a bit silly. She has a name, _now what_. The ghost's gone. They haven't seen it since the morning in the garden. Nothing strange has happened, apart from George not losing his clothes last full moon and being almost cheerful when he'd come back. She'll tell George, they'll talk about it a bit, laugh about it and then put the page somewhere safe where they'll forget about it.

She sighs, folding up the print-out and dropping it back inside her handbag. One day, they'll find it, laugh and go _oh yeah, we had a ghost..._ and then throw it out. It's the way things go. The ghost is gone.

But she has a name for him, in case he ever comes back.

Almost briskly, she grabs her handbag and the bag of groceries, scrambling out of the car and heading for the door. The key sticks in the lock, so she really has to twist her hand to get the lock undone. Then the door is stiff and she has to push hard with her hip to get the door open.

The backdoor opens and George is coming in, covered in dirt with scratches on his arms.

'Annie, hi!'

'George! What on earth have you been doing?'

'Working out in the yard. There's a shed almost completely buried under vines and creepers. Been clearing it so we can use it for stuff. You know, get the garden in order. Grow some vegetables.'

'Oh.' Annie drops her keys in the tray by the door. 'Well, I was successful!'

'You got bacon?'

Annie rolls her eyes. 'No. Well, yes. But, more importantly, I got a name for the ghost.'

George doesn't seem that excited. 'That's good.'

'And I didn't want to eat anyone.'

_Much_ , she thinks, but doesn't say it. Still, George grins like she's just won a marathon.

'See? I told you it would get easier.'

She pulls out the print-out and hands it over to George. He unfolds it slowly, looks down at the photo – dark and blurry from the poor quality of the library's printer, but still clear enough to recognise the features – and her writing beneath it.

'Didn't take me too long. He was the youngest Mitchell boy at the time. Went off to war and didn't come back. Well, not that anyone knew.'

'I know,' George says, folding the sheet of paper up again, 'He's here.'

'What? What's he done now?' She cranes her head, trying to see if anything's different.

'Nothing. Well, he broke a glass. By accident. And he's been helping with the shed. Actually, it was his idea and he's done most of the work. He's still out there now.'

' _What_.' They have a ghost and it _accidentally_ broke a glass and now it's helping them fix up the house. This is _insane_.

George takes the bag off her and walks her into the kitchen, beginning the unpacking. 'I've talked to him. A bit. He's nice. A bit weird and a bit shy, but we're the first people he's spoken to in over ninety years, so it's all relative. He's nice, though.'

Annie slowly crosses to the window, has to contort herself to see the shed, see the ghost pulling bits of creeper off the rusty corrugated iron sides. He turns, suddenly, and his eyes meet hers. With a soft cry, she jumps back, but when she looks again, he looks as frightened as she feels.

'Honestly, I think you frighten him.' George screws the grocery bag up into a ball. 'I don't think it's personal. He tends to... freak out a bit, when I mention the v-word.'

'Virginity?'

'Vampire.'

'Oh.'

She can't deny the heavy weight that settles in her at that thought. _Vampire._ She squeezes her eyes shut. _It's not you, it's the monster you are_ , she thinks. It should be so easy to get him to trust her. To like her. A cup of tea, a biscuit and a smile. It nearly always works. But maybe it won't work on him.

'By the way, he says the floorboards are full of rot and our taste in coffee tables is lacking.' George shrugs. 'Guess that's something the real-estate agent didn't mention. That, and the live-in ghost. At least he's determined to be useful now he's decided that we're too good for rotten steaks in the bathtub.'

'You're joking.'

'Ah, nope.' George rocks back on his heels, digging his hands into his jeans pockets. He's grinning, looking giddy and so absurdly happy and this ghost can't be all bad news. Not if he's the reason George looks happier than he has in a long time.

'Right,' he says, 'Are you going to come out and meet him?'

Annie looks down at the bench, the worn wood in desperate need of a varnish or a replacement. 'I – oh, I don't know. He'll probably just do the vanishing thing as soon as he sees me.'

'He won't.' George's voice is firm and he's shaking his head when she looks up. 'I made him promise. Come on. If we're going to stay here, you're going to have to meet him someday.'

+

The wind's picking up when Annie and George step outside, sending the grey clouds scattering. The ghost doesn't seem to notice or care terribly much, attacking a thick swathe of greenery clinging to the shed with a machete. It looks old, dull brown metal instead of glittering steel. She's not sure how he can move so freely in the stiff uniform he's wearing.

'Mitchell,' George calls and her sharp glance, he shrugs and says in a stage-whisper, 'That's what he said his name was.'

The ghost – _Mitchell_ – drops the machete into the soft ground at his feet and twists, walking towards them. He looks somewhat pained, somewhat frightened, but resolute. He tilts his head down to look at her, eyes narrowed. Without the helmet on, she can see his face clearly this time. He's more attractive than she thought he was, even after considering the print-out. All cheekbones, dark brooding looks and really nice eyes.

'This is Annie, Mitchell,' George says, quickly, when it becomes clear neither one of them is going to speak. 'Annie, Mitchell. Please don't fight.'

'Hi,' Annie says softly.

Mitchell nods. 'Hello.'

'I—' Annie bites her lip. She doesn't know what else to say. 'You've done a good job on the shed.'

Mitchell glances over at it, shrugs. 'It was overdue.' He hunches down, rounded shoulders and bowed neck.

'Hey, mate,' George says softly, reaching out to touch his arm, 'It's all right. No one's blaming you.'

Annie glances between them. She doesn't know what they're talking about. The house hasn't been lived in for decades. It's not Mitchell's fault it's been so neglected. She tells him this, but he just shrugs and avoids her eyes.

'He's not been well, I think. Sort of... a ghost sickness?' George squeezes Mitchell's arm. 'I don't know how these things work.

'Fading,' Mitchell says, 'Becoming smoke in the air when there's no fire.'

Annie sends a startled look at George. He looks worried and just as confused as she feels.

'I've been getting better,' Mitchell says, suddenly, and he turns to George, eyes wide, 'Since I started talking to you. I don't forget as much and I don't worry about falling through floors.'

'That's good,' George says and, bless him, he really sounds like he means it, pulling Mitchell over to the wooden bench, grey and weathered. 'Sit down for a bit, okay? You're looking pale.'

'I'll make tea,' Annie says, 'Always helps.'

Mitchell looks up at her, eyes wide and startled. Then, unbelievably, he laughs. George looks at her grinning, but worry clouds most of his amusement.

+

'Here,' George says, quietly, when Annie's inside making tea. 'Annie found this.'

He passes over the print-out Annie had given him. Mitchell takes it carefully and then unfolds it gingerly. Slowly, Mitchell traces a careful, pale finger over Annie's writing as he stares at the photo. It's an awful print, too much contrast and too dark, even a little blurry.

' _John_ ,' Mitchell says, so quiet George has to strain his ears to hear him. 'Yes. That was me. John Mitchell.'

+

In the evening, they sit, all three of them, dotted around the living room. The fire is lit for the first time, the soft crackle and hiss of the wood burning comforting. George is sitting beneath the reading light, pouring over the pages of a cheap paperback. Mitchell has made himself a home on the squashy armchair, feet pulled up onto the cushion, head resting on his knees. His eyes are liquid and dark, heavy with thought, but so far away.

Annie can't resist smiling, even as she turns the pages of the decorating magazine on her lap, absent-mindedly marking pages. The house needs work – fresh paint, new curtains, new floorboards. But it's nothing too daunting. They can make the repairs and make the house beautiful again. There's nothing that can't be fixed.

For a moment, Annie wants to say something – anything. Pull them back to the room with her. Her eyes keep leaving the pages of her magazine, turning to the boys, their faces soft in the firelight. She wonders what brought them here, what kept Mitchell here all these years – and how they found each other.

But what it that matter, she wonders, as long as they are together?


End file.
